1. Field
The present invention relates to a method for determining relationship data associated with application programs in a messaging system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Software client applications are often written as and when they are required. It is not uncommon for an application to be developed with little or no supporting documentation.
Furthermore, some messaging environments (using a messaging product such as WebSphere MQ (WebSphere is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation)) support asynchronous messaging resulting in a loose coupling between applications (e.g. in order to prevent an error associated with one application from holding up another application).
Although asynchronous messaging environments have advantages, understanding aspects about the environment, such as which application typically communicates with which other application(s), becomes very difficult.
There exist prior art mechanisms which insert data into a message such that the message can be tracked as it flows through the messaging infrastructure. However, this is a fairly intrusive mechanism and can have a detrimental effect on performance due to, for example, the size of the inserted data.
There also exist prior art mechanisms which modify (e.g. disable) components in the infrastructure in order to understand how applications are affected by the changes made. Once again, this is a fairly intrusive mechanism and has the added burden of requiring changes to the infrastructure which can be complex and error prone. Furthermore, this approach is difficult to implement if a business does not have a full test environment that replicates a production environment.